Symphony for Vanyel and Grantaire
by caudelac
Summary: yes, a Last Herald MageLes mis crossover. they're both shaych, yes, but not together. They were both just... lonely, and wrote this when I wasn't looking. but it really is PG. honest! (unless you think that Vanyel with his shirt off ought to be pg-13)


Symphony for Vanyel and Grantaire  
  
(Mercedes Lackey had better not kill me. Yes, I called him. But he did come. Hugo, being dead, at least cannot throw lawyers at me, and then-- look at his lawyers! Courfeyrac and Marius! I'm afraid I'd just want to hug them. Okay, enough of that.)   
  
The Herald Mage holds his arms out straight from his sides and Marone plays the violin. He plays well. He might have been Bardic Gifted, thinks the Herald, if he'd been born in the right world.  
  
He could be still. Forms and talents are mutable. Especially among their kind, which trancends world.  
  
The Herald mage has to dance. He stips off his Pristine White Tunic and tosses it away, behind the rowan tree. The drunkard with his instrument leans against the ash, and does not notice. He just plays, his big, broad hands contorted in ways that must certianly be very painful, at the rates he is keeping them up, thinks Vanyel. He will have to help the Fiddler, but after the Dancing.  
  
He begins, slowly, with the arms. Feet follow, and the body throws itself behind them in time with the merry melody, picking up it's pace. It is a god's own magic, coiming forth fom his fingers and the fingers on the bow, and leaves his afterimage on air that just recently shrouded him. The trees weep leaves to behold his twirling and leaping, his saraband and his pirouette; and these things form a kind of humming accompaniment to the violin, echoed by the sky-night-wood caught up in the thrill of something so beautiful, and so extraordinary as this strange composition in their midst.  
  
The drunkard's eyes are closed, so he does not see this, but he plays all the faster. If the dancing is music, the music is a dance; acrobatic fingers uncoreographed and creating beauty as spontaneous and natural as drinking itself. The Herald Mage could not compete, were it a competition. For Intoxication such as this Grantaire knows so well, such transported trances are his element, as is the deep sinking night above his head.  
  
It isn't competing, but still there is a time when Vanyel falls to his knees, out of breath and aching, and Marone is still playing. The music hurts deep in the bones, violent and furious, so much so that a heart or a string might be broken in it -- be broken, or burst into flame.   
  
Dance! Cries the Herald's soul, and ever can he see the wild and fractious patterns he would make if his bones and body did not groan in protest against this longing.   
  
No more! it gasps and moans.   
  
Oh please! Cries the rest of him, he thinks-- the best of him.   
  
But he simply can't, nor can he protest, only gasp and gulp for the burning air in his singed lungs, watching and listening helplessly while Grantaire plays on and on. Helplessly, and enviously. How /can/ he do that? His fingers must bleed; his hands must crack and his fingers scream with agony.  
  
But he doesn't stop, and Vanyel cannot tell if this is a sign of the drunkard's strength or weakness. A man made daring by wine, or a man who moves uselessly because he cannot move?  
  
It takes time, but the mage recovers, the sweat cooling on his body as he reclines against the yew tree, facing Grantaire. No more furious now, the Drunkard's music is gentler, relaxing, lovely in the way that makes one want to drift in the sky -- sink or fly -- vs. to whirl and twist and make love to the stars out of the sheer joy of existing in tandem with it and them. He watches Marone with an expression of deep curiosity, and flinches at the sight of blood on the bow-string. Except that the man is so ugly and misshapen, it almost reminds him of Someone Else, Somewhere Else.   
  
In spite of that, he takes the drunkard's hands from the instrument, and R's eyes open as the music stops, shocked sober. And Vanyel works his Healing on the deep lacerations, and Marone watches him with a deeper anger or hurt on his homely face.  
  
"Drugs and Drugs, Grantaire." Says Vanyel simply.  
  
"Tell me something I don't know." Says Marone, and holds his huge hand out for the violin. Vanyel cradles it in his arms, looking dubiosly at R's frown. They remain thus engaged for a few moments more, until Marone sighs irritably.   
  
"If you're going to keep her, at least keep her warm. I've heard you're not wholly a ham-hand with the bow."  
  
"I'm not." Says Vanyel, and puts it to the strings.   
  
And /THAT/ wakes Grantaire right up. It it's not the intoxicating madness of his own playing, as decadent and laden as bedlam, beltane night, midsummer eve, a bacchante ball-- Vanyel's playing is more a tesseract. It follows a perfect, impossible, crystalline Order; symmetrical, staggering, complex; the mathmatical genius of a long-practiced theorist. Grantaire plays like an auticstic child, Vanyel plays like a nuclear physicist.  
  
Both do it very, very beautifully, and there are tears in the eyes of both Herald and Winecask.  
  
Grantaire does not dance, for Vanyel does not play a dancing song, although Dancing is a thing he does both exceptionally well and by the rules. Instead he whistles, softly, a perfect accompaniment to Vanyel's melody; more eloquent than lyrics, for it says nothing at all.  
  
It is lovely to have a sound that is simply there to be pretty, and is not masked in a fake profundity, the way that words -- especially his-- often are. There are times and places for both sorts of things, they know this so well.   
  
Vanyel stops when he must, gliding to an unbearably smooth finish. He lowes his instrument and looks at the now-silent Grantaire. The Drunkard claps slowly with a sardonic grin.   
  
"Bravo, bravo, Herald. So you can fake a mean bosh."  
  
"Merci." Says Vanyel a bit proudly, in his borrowed French.  
  
"De rien."   
  
The symphony is now over. All that remains is a few moments of shared understanding before they bid eachother, "Hail and farewell!" then part, leaving the pretty glen to the trees and fireflies, and feeling better.  
  
  



End file.
